- From: Ralph Giles <giles@xiph.org>
- Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:55:46 -0700
On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 05:45:34PM -0700, Dave Singer wrote: > But [video/*] does at least indicate that we have a time-based multimedia > container on our hands, and that it might contain visual > presentation. "application/" suffers that it does not say even that, > and it raises the concern that this might be arbitrary, possibly > executable, data. We discussed whether application/ was appropriate > for MP4 and decided that it masked important characteristics of the > format -- that it really is a time-based multimedia presentation -- > and raised unwarranted concerns. I guess we made the opposite decision. Because Ogg was a container and could contain anything, including executable content, we went with the most generic option, based on analogy with application/octet-stream, application/pdf, etc. That we were working only on audio at the time may have coloured our judgement; the video-contains-audio argument didn't fit. I've noticed application/rss as a newer example, but I think that's more to encourage handoff from browsers without native support than an attempt at classification. Maciej's suggestion (registering all three) would work for Ogg, but I was under the impression that multiple registrations for the same format were discouraged. The disposition hinting proposal also works for general media types, without requiring registration of a suite of media types for every container. I also think it's a better solution for playlists, which are and aren't time-based media. Would you also go with video/x-m3u, video/rss for those text-based formats? Overloading the base types works, but so does a separate indication. Both are backward-compatible extensions to the media-type field, and both require software changes to implement. One however, requires registering new types, including audio/quicktime. :) Thanks for explaining your rationale, it's interesting to hear. -r
Received on Thursday, 12 April 2007 11:55:46 UTC